Page 17 of Love, Academically

“Okay.” Rhys swallowed and tried to keep the disdain off his face. This was going to be a long seminar. “What makes you say that?”

DeVon launched into a ramble about how Richard was the most like Henry, and how he was a warrior, blah blah blah.

Henry was an administrator, not a warrior, and whilst DeVon had obviously done some reading about Henry II and Richard, he had obviously not ventured very far into reading about any of the other sons.

“I see.” Rhys nodded and tried to frame a question that wasn’t a put-down. “What about John? He was an administrator, like his father, Henry II. Or Geoffrey, one of Henry’s illegitimate children. Could they possibly be the ‘favourite’?” Yes, he air-quoted.

DeVon looked at his notes and one of the girls shuffled on the sofa.

“It’s a good conclusion to have drawn, DeVon, and there is certainly some evidence to support that.

” Some, not a lot. “I think ‘favourite’ is a difficult word. I see Henry II as acting less as a father to his legitimate sons. He treated them more as rivals. It’s my opinion that Henry’s relationships with his illegitimate sons were less fraught, precisely because they were illegitimate. ”

DeVon nodded and scribbled something in his notes. The girl who was always using the wrong font opened her notebook in front of her.

“But we’re talking about Henry II and his son, Henry the Young King in this seminar. What other aspects of their relationship have you found?”

Rhys opened the floor and sat back. The two girls were tentative at first, but he kept asking open questions, giving non-committal answers rather than telling them straight ‘you are wrong’ and pushing their line of thinking in different directions.

He kept an eye on Lila. She was most definitely listening and every time his voice scratched in his throat, the tapping of her keyboard stuttered, even though she never took her eyes off the screen.

When he (gently) pointed out the gaping holes in his students’ knowledge and suggested they should do some more reading with phrases borrowed from a Google search on ‘how to give constructive feedback’ such as ‘have you considered’, and ‘I take your point, but…’, he was sure that Lila’s mouth curved into a proud smile.

A small smile that wasn’t meant for anyone, but one that he caught himself wishing she would use only for him.

Rhys blinked.

This was new.

Lila

Lila learned a couple of things that afternoon.

The first one was that Henry II was not a very good father. The second was that she didn’t concentrate very well when Rhys was in the room.

It probably wasn’t Rhys himself. There were so many other people in the room and it was much easier to listen to them rather than do her finger-numbing, soul-crushing work.

It was important that the department had up-to-date records, the students needed access to the intranet and quite frankly, it was completely frustrating that everything was so higgledy-piggledy.

If she’d known it was going to be this much work to sort things out into a basic semblance of organisation – and that she’d have to do half of Sue’s work as well – she would have asked for more money.

Well, she would have thought about asking.

It wasn’t that she could feel Rhys Aubrey’s hazel eyes flitting across her cheek and down her neck, or the slightly confused look he gave her when he left. No, it was just the fact that her office was the new seminar venue. Nothing to do with who was in her office.

Yep. Definitely not that.

Lila’s phone buzzed on her desk and she checked the notification from her personal email account, opening the marketing email quickly. Susie Dent, Queen of Dictionary Corner, was going on tour? Talking about the surreal origins of everyday words? What an absolute dream of a show to see.

There were dates across the next few months, and she scanned the venues to see which was closest and how much it was. God, who cared how much it was? She’d pay a lot of money to see Susie Dent talk about words.

Surely Jasmeet would come. She’d suffer through a word-based gig with her best friend, especially considering how many shopping trips Lila had gone on for art supplies and how many times she’d been her guinea pig for craft projects for five-year-olds.

She left two tickets in her basket and waited impatiently for Jasmeet to text back.

Not that she would for a while, she was teaching.

There was no use asking Maddy. If she was having a rare night off, she wouldn’t want it filled with what was the most ‘boring’ (EXCITING!) thing ever, i.e.

, the origin of words. Besides, they wouldn’t be home early enough, and there would be no leaving before the end to miss the crowds.

“Lila?”

A knock on her open office door interrupted her wondering about how appropriate her ‘origins of swear words’ t-shirt would be for Susie Dent, and she smiled at Rhys’s students.

“Hey guys, come in. Have a cookie.”

Lila reached for the cookie tin on her desk. DeVon took two, shoved one in his mouth and one in his pocket. Kerry nibbled on the smallest one she could find and Ada shook her head.

“We wanted to come by and say thank you for facilitating the seminar,” Ada said. “It was so much better. We feel like we actually learned something rather than stressing over whether we were saying the wrong thing.”

Kerry nodded, hugging her books to her chest.

“Oh guys, I am so glad,” Lila said. “That’s fab.”

Lila took a sip of her tea. Kerry nudged Ada with her elbow and raised her eyebrows.

“Oh yeah,” Ada said, exchanging a sly smile with DeVon and Kerry. “Is there something going on between you and Mr Aubrey?”

The tea was suddenly too hot in her mouth, too milky, too sugary, too much.

“What?” she coughed. “Me and Rhys?”

Kerry cracked a smile and Ada giggled. DeVon was distinctly uninterested, and shoved another cookie into his mouth.

“Yeah, you and Mr Aubrey. He kept staring at you, and,” Ada shrugged one shoulder, “we just wondered if it was you who had made him a bit less him.”

Lila blinked rapidly at them, swallowing down her surprise.

She’d thought the seminar had gone surprisingly well and if he carried on like that, there was no reason for them to hold it in her office.

He had measured his words and considered his responses.

There were no put-downs, no scathing comments, no pregnant silences.

It had been a good, constructive seminar, even if his voice had tensed just a little now and again.

“There is nothing going on with me and Rhys. He wants to be the best lecturer he can. But even if there was,” she said gently, with a wry smile, “I’m not sure that it would be any of your business.”

Kerry’s face dropped and her already pale cheeks lost even more colour. Ada looked at the floor and DeVon stopped chewing.

“I’m sorry, guys. I don’t mean to be horrible and I really appreciate your,” Lila cast around for the right word, “interest. But perhaps we’ll leave the personal lives of staff to those staff members, yeah?”

“Told you we should have just said thank you and left,” DeVon murmured.

“Have another cookie. My door is always open for whatever help you need. But we won’t talk about my private life, okay?”

Lila gave them what she hoped was a reassuring smile. Boundaries were needed, and she was absolutely right in setting them. They weren’t friends, they weren’t even colleagues. She was there to support them in their further education.

But she did worry about hurting their feelings.

They were only trying to look out for her.

Or were they really just looking for gossip?

Perhaps she shouldn’t have said anything, just bumbled something about ‘don’t be so silly’ and waved them off.

She thought of Jasmeet, she thought of her therapy.

Standing up for herself and not getting drawn into a discussion about her and Rhys (not that there was even a ‘her and Rhys’) was the right thing to do, no matter if it hurt their feelings a little bit.

Lila shook her head and turned back to sorting the intranet system for Professor Freeman’s masters students. She’d only checked through two students before she had to stop.

What did they mean, Rhys had been staring at her?

Surely they’d got it wrong. Just because she’d imagined Rhys’s eyes on her, it didn’t make it true.

The feeling of a dragonfly wing over her collarbone was the slight breeze coming through the open window.

The urge to smooth her hair behind her ears and make sure her make-up was perfect, that was just her being vain.

Hers wasn’t exactly the biggest of offices, so it would be highly likely that Rhys’s eyes would land her once or twice in the course of the hour-long seminar. ‘Staring’ was a particularly strong word for what was more than likely a fleeting glance.

Yes. That was it.

Thinking of Rhys (not that she had been thinking of Rhys), she would have to check when his family dinner was. She didn’t want to have to cancel and rebook Susie Dent when she could easily go to a different show.

Lila hobbled down the corridor to Rhys’s office. Yes, she could walk without the crutches now, but she was a smidge nervous about driving. Besides, Anika (her Uber driver’s sister) was about to give birth in South Africa and she really wanted to know the sex of the baby.

Lila knocked and opened the door without waiting for an answer.

Rhys was standing at the window with his back to her, hands in his pockets, pulling his trousers tight around that conker-like little bottom of his. Not that she was looking.

“Rhys?”

He jumped, snapped out of his reverie.

“Sorry.” Rhys turned to her and sat down, face blank. “I was lost in thought.”

“Henry II being the poster boy for bad parenting?” she asked, giving him a smile.

“Something like that.” He lined up some papers on his desk. “What can I do for you?”

Okay, straight down to business.

“When is your family dinner? I need to put it in my diary.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, tapping on his phone. “Two weeks on Saturday and I think we should get together soon. I’d like to tell you about my family, if you are going to be my girlfriend.” He huffed slightly. “Well, my pretend girlfriend.”

Two weeks on Saturday? Goodness, that was soon. Just as well she didn’t book those Susie Dent tickets, they would have clashed.

“Yes okay,” Lila pinched her lip between her teeth. “What do I wear? What’s the dress code?”

Unless it was skinny jeans and a nice top, or a sundress (in which case she’d be freezing because it was late autumn), then she would definitely need to do some shopping.

He sat down behind his desk and looked at his computer screen. So dismissive. Lila raised an eyebrow.

“We’ll go for dinner after work and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

Firstly, that was not an answer. Secondly, that was most definitely not a question. Rhys was making an assumption that she would just go along with him, literally dismissing her like a minion. Uh, no thanks. She’d had enough of that.

“Rhys?”

He turned his head towards her, but his eyes were still on his computer screen. “Mmm?”

“Rhys!” she snapped. There was no way she was talking to his side face. “Attention over here, please.”

His lips parted in shock, as if no one had ever talked to him like that. He was probably so used to having everyone do his bidding that any kind of pushback was a shock.

“Look, I know you’ve done a lot of people-ing today with the seminar and all, so I’m going to give you another chance to get this right.

” Her smile was a stretched non-smile, because there was no way Rhys deserved a real smile right now.

“Think about what you just said and how you said it, and try again.”

She must have lost her ever-loving mind to have said that to Rhys. But here she was, clutching her hips tightly to stop her hands from shaking. He wasn’t that scary, he was just a man. Like he said the other day, the only person who could make her feel worthless was her.

The muscles in Rhys’s jaw bunched together as he snapped his mouth shut, his emotions so easy to read on his face.

Anger, with his eyebrows drawn in and those pouty lips turned down.

Then confusion as his eyes skirted his desk.

The relaxation of his forehead and jaw into realisation and then the slow slump of his shoulders in defeat.

He passed a hand over his face and his throat worked as he swallowed.

“I’m sorry. Would you like to come for dinner with me tonight, if you’re not busy? We could talk.”

“That would be lovely, thank you. I’ll cancel my Uber.” She rewarded him with a tiny, satisfied smile.

“You’re getting an Uber? Where? Do you have plans?” Rhys asked, his eyebrows screwing together.

“No, no plans. I don’t feel quite up to driving yet,”

He leant back in his chair, assessing her. “And your friends couldn’t help you? Sue?”

“Jasmeet is working and busy. I can’t ask Maddy or her wife, they’ve got the baby. Sue lives too far away.” And Sue wouldn’t. Lila rubbed her ring finger and her thumb together. Explaining herself to Rhys Aubrey was not on her schedule for today.

“Why didn’t you ask me?”

“I’ve put you out too much already. I can’t ask you to ferry me back and forth to work as well. I’m sure I’ll feel able to drive in the next couple of days.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you must have spent a fortune on taxis.” He pursed his lips. “You should have said.”

“I’m not going to argue with you about this, Rhys.”

“I’ll dri—” He stopped and tried again. “Please may I drive you home after dinner tonight?”

Lila’s heart stuttered ever so slightly, because Rhys was trying. He was really, really trying.